Category Archive

When brewing with Blue and White, my mind initially went to Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, Absorb and Precognitive Perception. However, my heart was drawn, as it often is, to a more creature-based strategy – and particularly one Dovin, Grand Arbiter. White aggressive strategies were fan favorites last season; they were popular early in the format, and saw continued success with …

Last week, I brewed up a new Standard Simic deck using my old friend Carnage Tyrant. It was so much fun that I decided to try again this week – but this time, we’re going Gruul! A 7/6 Trampling Hexproof Dino is already a promising way to close out games, but I found myself asking, “Why not give it Haste?” …

Ravnica Allegiance throws us into the wild, brutal world of the Gruul Clans. With a brand new mechanic and even a planeswalker to evaluate, the set gives aggressive players a smorgasbord of exciting tricks and toys. The old adage that it pays to play aggro at the beginning of a format would seem to bode well for red and green …

With Ravnica Allegiance just around the corner, I can’t stop thinking about all of the new decks I want to build and all of the new cards I want to test. That’s why each week I’m going to be brewing a Standard deck for a different guild, starting with some Blue-Green bio-engineered baddies: Simic! Simic’s new adapt mechanic favors +1/+1 …

White Aggro decks invaded the scene at Pro Tour Guilds of Ravnica, putting six decks into the top eight and taking down the entire event in the hands of Andrew Elenbogen. Taking advantage of an incredibly low curve, including upwards of sixteen one-drop creatures, the White Aggro deck utilizes powerful small and evasive threats like Skymarcher Aspirant and Healer’s Hawk …

With the first rotation in what feels like years, Standard waves goodbye to staples such as The Scarab God and Glorybringer and hello to a whole wide world of new toys to explore. This shakeup allows for new ingenuity, and the consensus is that it will breathe new life into Standard, as well as non-rotating formats such as Modern and …

Another new set means another opportunity to shake up constructed, and M19 doesn’t disappoint! This is the first core set since Magic Origins in 2015, and with it comes the opportunity to inject staples back into Standard, as well as unleashing powerful new tools for all our favorite Constructed formats. The Planeswalkers A new core set means a new …

With Pro Tour Dominaria about to unfold this weekend, the Standard landscape is becoming increasingly unsteady. While U/W Control and B/R Aggro are still ubiquitous, more divergent strategies are emerging as players choose “beat ’em” over “join ’em.” The most talked-about deck of these is B/W Vehicles, which our own Chris VanMeter took out for a spin this past week. …

The post-Dominaria Standard metagame seems to be taking shape, with U/W Control decks and Red Aggro decks facing off in tournament halls and local game stores alike. Having covered both decks thoroughly in previous installments of Deck of the Week, we tuned into this week’s Team Standard Super League to see what else the format had to offer. Tuesday’s episode …

Dominaria Standard is still a new and shiny format, open to all kinds of innovation and originality. Early results have shown a massive swing away from the previous Standard metagame, with nary a Scarab God to be found. Without that great bug-headed monstrosity casting its ominous shadow over the battlefields and graveyards of our Standard matches, many new archetypes are …